collection1b

April 13, 2016

Bibliometrics and Citations

I was undertaking a bibliometric search, or a citation analysis, otherwise known as “Googling your own name”, and while searching for images of hand pen, and pen in hand, and hand & pen, and hand and pen, and hand and pen kovalenko, and hand pen stock photos, I stumbled upon a truism. If you google any random set of words, eventually you find porn, “penis instead of a pen”. When I show my books and blogs to anyone I call them my “babies”. There’s a song by the Rankin Family called “Rise Again” that has the refrain, “We rise again in the faces of our children. We rise again in the voices of our songs”. And I add, “We rise again in our books and written words”. It’s our modern version of reincarnation. Life is short, but art is long. Well, a few books and articles have been published that have made use of the information in the three volumes of my patents and penmakers books. The books by David Moak, David Shepherd, Max Davis, and Gary Lehrer, and articles by Ron Dutcher, Rob Astyk, Sterling Picard, and Moak have all been generous with their citations and acknowledgements of both volumes of the patent book and my penmakers book, and it’s very gratifying to see this. Well, these books and articles are the next generation, and I have taken to calling them my “grandchildren”. Now, that’s bibliometrics, too.